UCSD gets $7.5 million to establish institute to research mind, brain

UCSD has been awarded $7.5 million to advance brain research, the university announced yesterday.

It is one of seven institutions to receive awards from the Kavli Foundation, an Oxnard-based philanthropic group established by former industrialist Fred Kavli that supports research in cosmology, the life sciences and nanoscience.

A new institute at the University of California San Diego will be called The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UCSD and will focus on how genes influence behavior, how brains repair themselves, and the biological underpinnings of memory, learning, consciousness and attention.

"UCSD is enormously grateful to Fred Kavli and the Kavli Foundation for these generous gifts," said Acting Chancellor Marsha A. Chandler, who called the new institute a "top priority" for the campus.

Neuroscientist Nick Spitzer, who will direct the institute with sociologist Jeffrey Elman, compared increased understanding of the brain to decoding the human genome. Like that achievement, unraveling how the brain works will lead to myriad insights into what makes us human, he said.

"We will begin to see breakthroughs in medical treatments for physical and mental disorders, as well as a broad range of social applications addressing learning impairment, emotional trauma and social interactions," Spitzer said.

Fred Kavli, formerly the head of one the world's largest suppliers of sensors for the aeronautical and automotive industries, said his goal was to fund research "at the frontiers of science."

"I feel it is especially important to . . . seek answers to the most fundamental unanswered questions," he said.

Other award winners announced yesterday were Yale and Columbia universities, which also will study brain science; Cornell University, the California Institute of Technology and Delft University of Technology in Holland, which will study nanoscience; and the University of Chicago, which will study cosmology.